


Tanizah

by Go0se



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: (It pleases me that that's a tag), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:18:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of snapshots about the life of Tim W. and Tanizah, his badger daemon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Tim W. Goes Home

**Author's Note:**

> So this was started in a Tumblr post ([here](http://scrollingdown.tumblr.com/post/60142278422/imagine-a-marble-hornets-his-dark-materials)) written by scrollingdown, and I responded to it and have not actually been able to stop. If you want to learn more about daemons, which are from a book series called 'His Dark Materials', click [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Materials%29). 
> 
> Tanizah/Tansy is a American badger (a separate species from the European badgers) who looks aprox. like [ this](http://www.thebigzoo.com/images/animals/Taxidea_taxus_001.jpg) and her name means [‘persistent’](http://www.mybabyname.com/names/Tanizah).  
>  **Warnings for this chapter** : emotional distress, reference to suicide.

 

**In Which Tim W. Goes Home**

  
The worst part about waking up after one of his episodes hungry and tired and alone was the _alone._ Tim had no idea what was wrong with him any more than the doctors’ had, but he knew it must be pretty fucking bad to be able to separate him from Tanizah. That should never happen. He should be dead from being so far apart from her. When he wakes up away from her like this he can feel her absence like a bullet hole in the side of his head.  
Sometimes he would wake up in his car, and that was marginally better because then he could just break speed limits and the pain would be over within minutes. But more often than not there were times like this, when he’d have to stumble through fields and woods, unsure of what day or month it was and where he was going, his entire brain occupied with getting back to her.

On foot or in his car, when he finally reached his neighbourhood again he could hear her calling to him from down the street. It was less of a call and more of an anguished howl.  
At first she’d been trapped inside their house, forced to wait until he came and opened the door for her. But the third time in as many months that he had come back like this she had actually met him on the road; she’d been wild-eyed and breathing heavily, loose plaster stuck to her short grey fur. He found out later that she’d clawed and dug her way through the side of their house, inch by inch, until she had gotten free and went to find him. He didn’t repair the damage, just stuck a board in front of the hole. After that she always met him out at the road, and while there was no more plaster in her fur her eyes never got less wide and dark with misery.  
Now when he got close enough to her he knelt numbly, andshe scrambled from the ground into his arms. Her claws punctured and tore his jacket and sometimes his skin but Tim was so incredibly far beyond giving a single fuck that it didn’t even register to him.   
He felt horrible, and he could feel her echoing that on top of her own fear and grief, which only made him feel worse.  
  
She never asked him where he had gone. She never demanded that he never do that to her ever again. Tim knew _she_ knew that he couldn’t promise that, no matter how much literally every part of his conscious brain screamed to.   
Instead, she would press her furry face into the side of his neck and urge him to stand.   
And he would. He’d stagger upright and get the both of them the few dozen more feet to his front door. If he could actually bring himself to unwrap one of his arms from around her in order to reach his keys he’d unlock the door and they’d be able to get inside before sinking to the floor and simply clutching each other. A lot of times he couldn’t even do that, though. They’d both just sit there, in front of their house in the dirt, until the bleeding stopped.

  
////


	2. In Which There Are Four Balls On The Edge Of A Cliff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mention of medication and smoking/drinking (orange juice).  
> Silliness and soul-friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brian's daemon Esther is a female ringtailed lemur who looks about like [this](http://www.durrell.org/library/animals/Ring-Tailed-Lemur3.jpg) whose name means ‘star’, and Sarah's Connlaodh is a male hare who looks about like [this](http://oi40.tinypic.com/k0shnm.jpg) whose name means ‘pure fire’.

**In Which There Are Four Balls On The Edge of a Cliff**

  
“You’re not being particularly fair,” Tansy said.  
  
Her and Tim had just finished saying goodbye to Brian and Esther, who Tim could still see through the window. Ester was perched on Brian’s shoulder and they appeared to be going over Alex Kralie’s script together.  
Tim was not entirely sure why they would bother. He went to the kitchen to get himself an orange juice and, after a second’s thought, the slightly malformed leaf ash tray Brian had given him after he’d taken ceramics last semester. “I don’t have to be fair, the movie sucks.”  
Tansy’s claws clicked over the linoleum floor as she followed him into the kitchen and then stopped right by his ankle, snuffling imperiously. He picked her up and put her on the counter beside him. “You can’t say it’s that bad, it’s not even halfway finished yet,” she replied, resting her furry head on the bend in his elbow.  
“It’s _going_ to suck,” Tim said. With the arm that his daemon was not currently using as a pillow he reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter and his pack of smokes. Tansy lifted her head with an annoyed snort when he put the cigarettes on the counter, but he ignored her. “Alex is a decent guy, I guess, but he can’t write dialogue worth much. His head’s bigger than his talent.”  
Just then his phone beeped in his pocket. Tim made a ‘one second’ gesture to Tansy (not that she would care), went into the bathroom and took his meds. The bottle made a light _clink_ as he put it back on the counter. He'd need a refill soon.  
Back in the kitchen Tansy was nosing at his orange juice. He took it out from under her nose and stepped out of her reach, narrowing his eyes at her for a second as he drank.  
“Esther and Brian like him,” Tansy said, still talking about Alex Kralie. She curled her tail so it stopped hanging over the side of the counter and rested her head on her paws. “So do Connlaodh and Sarah.”  
“Just because they do doesn’t mean we have to.”  
“No,” she agreed, “But you could give him more of a chance.”  
After a short pause, Tim set his now mostly empty cup back down (which she immediately lapped up the last dregs of the juice from). He picked up his lighter and a smoke, propping himself up on the counter on his elbows. Tansy coughed pointedly as he lit up, so he inhaled extra long just for show.  
It was her turn to narrow her eyes at him. He held her gaze. ‘Whenever I’m around other people,” he intoned, “I feel like I’m wearing a mask to hide who I _really am_.”  
There was another strained second of staring. Then Tansy let out a couple barks of laughter and Tim grinned a little, and they shifted closer to each other so her nose was just barely touching his elbow.  
“But we’re going to act in it,” Tansy said after a little while of companionable silence. She tapped her claws on the counter idly. “Even though it’s bad and the director’s pretentious.”  
Tim shrugged as he ashed his cigarette. The movie was something to do after classes, something other than homework and regular work and music and reading old kiddy sci-fi novels. Plus, Brian had asked them to be in it as a favour. It wasn’t like it was going to cause any problems.  
"Might as well."

  
////


	3. In Which Change Is Scary and Unexplainable, or, How Teenage Tim Starts Smoking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new therapist Tim is seeing wants to talk about Tim's time as a young teenager.
> 
> Warnings for discussion of mental health, hospital stays and use of medication.

  
  
Tanizah settled on a form when Tim was fifteen, and it had freaked him out.  
He hadn't even recognized what she was at first. The group home they'd been living in had a ragged book collection which included a picture dictionary of animals, and the morning after she'd settled for good was a Saturday, so he'd spent about an hour leafing through the book page by page until he found her. American badger. Can be aggressive if provoked. Not that knowing what she was (and would be for as long as they were both alive) had made him any less freaked out about it.  
  
This therapist has a lot to say about that, mostly bits like how for a long time in Tim's life the only constant had been inconstant things so it “would make sense” that he'd have rejected an expression of solidity, especially when Tanizah's continued shifting had been so inherent to Tim's identity as a young person.  
Tim doesn't think that that actually makes any sense, _thank you_.  He also doesn't understand why it's apparently so important that he dig up all this  _now,_ when it's six years gone and dealt with. Especially when there's things in his life currently that Tim's had enough therapy to recognize he needs help dealing with. He wants to call his regular doctor and cancel the future appointments he has with this one; branching out had been a bad idea. He wants to get out of the uncomfortably cold room.  
“Tell me about your time at that age,” this therapist says. They lean forward as they're saying it, resting their elbows on the wood-panelled desk that's between them and Tim. The therapist's ferret daemon is curled up on a small stool on the therapist's side. (As far as Tim can tell it's protocol for both physician and daemon to have the same amount of space between them and the patient.)  
Tim opens his mouth to tell them that this isn't actually relevant, but before he can Tansy shifts on his lap. She pointedly locks eyes with him, then looks toward the clock on the wall and then the door; _it's not worth arguing about when we'll leave soon,_ is what she means. Tim sighs internally. But she's right. He looks back up at the therapist, who nods encouragingly.  
  
"Well..."

  
Well. Fifteen. Tim had still been in care then. It was... 'good' would be an overstatement, but it was at least more bearable than it had been. His meds were a lot more regular. He'd got transferred away from the place by the park, which was a relief he couldn't quite explain. (Tim didn't mention at all to his doctors-- and he doesn't say it to the therapist now).

The group home he'd been put in was a house with thirteen staff, two floors, six single-occupant rooms, five kids other than him, locks on all the windows and an intercom system at the front door. Tim was allowed on “outings” to museums and libraries twice a month; on top of that, he was getting to go to an actual school. When the outing or school day was finished he either got back in the group's van with the other issue kids, or got a ride back to the home from the school's guidance councillor.  
  
In his school most of the kids' daemons had already been settled for a while. Tim would probably have gotten made fun of for having a daemon who still shifted, if anyone had actually talked to him when he first got there.  It was harder to tell who'd settled and who hadn't at the group home because kids rotated in and out, and because he didn't really pay attention to them unless they talked to him first-- it was marginally safer that way. Still, Tim knew there was a girl about his age in the room directly below his whose daemon was permanently a medium-sized brown bear. When the girl got angry, which was a lot, he could feel her bear's roar rattle the windows.  
  
At first, seeing that Tansy settled, Tim had assumed he must be in love with the bear girl. Daemon's settled when stuff like falling in real love happened, when you grow out of your childish things. (Or at least that was how his history teacher had put it.) There was a _reason_ for it. He thought of the bear girl more than he thought of the rest of the kids his age that he knew; and sure, 'more than the rest' still wasn't very much _,_ but it made the most sense that he'd be in love with her.  
Or at least it made the most sense to him until one of his bad days, when ideas kept turning over and over in his brain and he couldn't stop or divert them, then he thought that it was crap. For one thing he didn't even know the bear girl's _name._ And if daemons settled when you lost your childish things, well, what 'childish things' did he have to grow out of, anyway? Unprompted games of hide and seek in the woods at night by himself? Imaginary friends that scared him so bad he scratched at walls until his hands bled? The idea that his mom would eventually come back for him and if he just hugged her all the bad stuff would go away? It was all such, such _crap_.  
Unfortunately for him he was in school when that particular epiphany hit. Before Tansy had been able to say anything to him he'd straight-up yelled at a teacher who'd just been asking him a question, and since he hadn't been able to explain himself the principal had made him go back to the group home before the end of the day.  
Later that week, he'd had a one on one session with his then-therapist. Tim had explained as best he could what had been going through his head when he'd yelled at the teacher. The therapist listened and nodded a lot; her lemur daemon who was sitting on the back of her chair had nodded too, and blinked his wide eyes. When Tim was done the therapist had told him that it was perfectly natural to feel confused and angry at this time in his life. “You need to let it out, Timothy,” she had said.  
Tim knew better than to let it out. Letting it out had gotten him two forced absences from his afternoon classes. He wasn't _stupid._ Instead, he'd put into practice some good old-fashioned distraction and repression techniques: traded a kid at school some music test answers for cigarettes, took to smoking them one after the other under the spruce trees by the back doors until he stopped wanting to break things for a while. He'd hide them in his locker at the end of the day, and he'd never gotten caught.  
Tansy didn't like him smoking. She'd stood ten feet away from him with her back turned while he did it, but she'd forgiven him. He wasn't worried about her telling anyone.  
  
She still hates the cigarettes. They smell terrible.  
Thinking about it now is strange. Tim had been upset and Tansy had been upset with him (but not at him), and he'd been kind of upset _about her,_ but it wasn't her fault. Now he understands that; then he'd understood it too but had been upset anyway. Her settling had knocked something off its axis in his mind which had been wobbly to begin with. And it'd been worse back then.  
This therapist nods and tells him hindsight is twenty-twenty. (It's the third cliche in the thirty minutes they'd been in this appointment. Tim thinks that that's kind of unprofessional but, again, not worth it to argue.) “How did you _resolve_ that off-axis feeling?”  
Tansy snorts at that; she quickly covers it up with a bark-sneeze. Tim lightly scratches her ear to say that he agreed. It is a ridiculous question.  
How did Tim resolve it? Tim hadn't. Very rarely did stuff get properly _resolved_ in Tim's life. He had just learned to deal with it, like all the other crap he had and does put up with.  
This therapist looks disappointed. "How did you deal with it, then, Tim?"  
Tim thinks. Mostly he'd just ignored all of it-- his own reactions to things, Tansy's touchiness, all of it-- until it had stopped.  But before he can tell the therapist that, Tansy moves again, settling on her back legs so that she's just tall enough to see over the edge of the desk. “We had an honest discussion about it,” she says.  
  
It's only as she says it that Tim remembers. The two of them _had_ talked, a month after she'd settled and a week after he'd shouted at the teacher; he's just not thought about it in a long time.  
They'd been in their room at the group home. The only light in the room was the moon seeping in the window. Tim was lying face-up on the bed, not afraid of looking toward the window or to the far corner of his room that the moonlight didn't quite reach. Tansy was resting on his chest, careful with her relatively new claws. He had asked her, with a question as out of the blue as could be you kind of shared thoughts, why she'd changed.  
“You did too,” she'd answered.  
“Yeah.” _No crap,_ he hadn't said. “But why.”  
Tansy paused. “Do you not like it?”   
“It's not that,” Tim protested. Tansy was beautiful; her fur shined when light hit it, and she was strong and sturdy in a way that he never felt. (His eyes stray toward the window for a second before snapping away again.)   
Tansy snorted softly at Tim's hand. Reflexively, Tim scratched her ears and smoothed her fur. She pressed her head into the scratching contentedly, and then let it be quiet for a while. “I don't know why I did,” she said, after a few minutes of the two of them just blinking in the dark. She moved higher on Tim's chest so she was right over his heart and then laid her head on her paws. “It was just time. And this is the right change,” she added. “I can feel it.”  
After another few minutes: “Tim?” she asked quietly. She knew he wasn't asleep, of course, because she was still awake, but not why he wasn't answering.   
Tim had been frowning at the ceiling and trying to dig around in his thoughts for some of the certainty that Tansy had described. “... I don't feel anything,” he answered finally. “Whether it's the right change or not.” He looked down at Tansy, with her wide claws and grey fur and deep eyes. “I guess you can stay like this.”   
Tansy blinked at him. “Go to sleep,” she said.    
Grudgingly, he closed his eyes. He concentrated on her warmth and rumbly breathing and not on the thing waiting at the window for him to look out, or on the corner that was deeper than it should've been and seemed to twist. (Not that he was afraid.) He also ignored the tickling feeling at the back of his throat that would get sharp and unbearable if he breathed the wrong way. He would get his medication in the morning.   
Tansy snorted again. He could feel her keeping her eyes on the corner and the window that he wasn't afraid of.  
“Thanks,” he'd mumbled.

  
And that had been it. When he tells it now, Tim can't see anything more intriguing or affirming or whatever than when it had actually happened, but the therapist's eyes have a gleam that, in Tim's experience, means they think they've found a root. Tim is breathing in to say how it really wasn't that-- closure giving, it was just how him and Tanizah talked to each other, when the buzzer at the door rings. It's the end of the appointment.  
The therapist's ferret daemon stirs and climbs up on the therapist's shoulders at the same time as Tim gathers Tansy into his arms and stands up.  
Tansy could walk, but Tim always feels peeled back and expose after therapy; keeping her as close as possible helps. It's not like she minds. Right now, she fits herself inside his open jacket.  
The therapist is scribbling stuff on paper, saying something about future appointments and hypnotics, but Tim is already more than halfway out of the room. “Thank you,” Tim says automatically over his shoulder, and then shuts the office's door firmly behind him.  
  
Outside the clinic he takes a moment to breathe.

Tansy sneezes a couple times, then tells him, “You left your smokes in here again." Her voice is muffled from inside his jacket but Tim can still hear the fussiness in it.  
“Sorry.” He carefully shifts all her weight to one arm, and pulls the aforementioned cigarettes out of his inside pocket with his opposite hand. Then he studies them. They're Marlboro's, his usual pick. The one's he'd traded the music kid in high school for had been Camel's. God only knows how the kid had gotten those, she'd been no older than him. It was so strange to think about her, now, after all this time. It makes his head swim.  
He feels Tansy press her nose gently to his shirt. She can hear the circles his thoughts are starting to run in. “No one likes talking about high school,” she says gently.  
Tim's not really a stranger to regret; he understands it'll eat him alive if he lingers on it too long. “I know,” he tells Tansy. He stuffs the cigarette pack in his right pocket and walks over the sidewalk to his car. 

  
////

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the type:  
> When I was writing this, I asked my mom about what kind of care (“”) Tim would've gotten because she was a councillor for a long time and as such knows 500% more about the mental health system than I do. (Though we're in Canada, so it might be a bit different than the US one.) She told me a lot, but most relevantly that Tim would've stayed in the hospital for a certain amount of time after a catalyst incident, like a violent outburst or a suicide attempt, and then been moved out, either to his parents' or a foster home (especially a specialized one), or to a group home. Tim said in #66 that he got moved to another 'facility' which rules out his mom picking him up again and a foster family, however specialized it may have been; my mom said that group homes are a kind of facility in and of themselves sometimes. So I went with that.  
> She also said that if he'd been in care all that time it would only have been because he was 'unmanageable', therefore, he probably wouldn't have gone to a normal school. Canon says he did, though. #compromises.


End file.
